


Coming out of the cold

by Reymonkey



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 10:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10535055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reymonkey/pseuds/Reymonkey
Summary: Brief one-shot of Bucky trying to adapt to post-Winter Soldier era life. Could be canon-compliant, it's a little vague.





	

It’s cold- but then, it’s always cold, and his breath makes a little cloud of steam in the air. That’s no good, a visual clue that could give away his position, but he keeps his head low and the vapor dissolves in the underbrush before it ever reaches open air. This is not Russia, ‘Swiss Alps’ he thought he heard somebody say. They speak around him as if he’s not there, usually, and he’s overheard a lot of things. There was mention of a ski vacation, and the U.N., of voting soon. What they told him directly was a name, a photo, a list of the family members to expect around the target.  
There are puzzle pieces here, and he can see the edges of them but the faces are blank; there’s nothing on them he has any chance of piecing into a bigger picture. There are other puzzle pieces, like the way they pulled him out of a very cold place, dragged him and put him somewhere with blinding pain. The pain was supposed to make him forget, and forget what he doesn’t know, so that must have worked. He can remember that this is a pattern though, just one in a long chain of times he’s been dragged from the cold and put in a chair where his vision whites out and his world is reduced to a knife in the brain. Should he be able to remember that they make him forget?  
Thinking about it makes his head hurt, with a dull throb behind one eye. Maybe it’s the thinking, or maybe it’s dehydration and lack of food, he’s not sure. He takes a careful sip off his canteen just in case, and waits.  
Somewhere out there is his handler, and a cordon of men lurking in the trees. They’re there in case he fails, in case the target catches on to something and tries to flee. They won’t move in unless that happens, and for now he can do nothing but wait, anyway. In the distance, at the other end of his binoculars, the target is behind a kitchen window, laughing with his wife and children as they sit down to dinner. There is still daylight, the sinking sun throwing long shadows from the trees, across the snow. The Asset waits. It’s easier, so much easier, not to think at all.

Later, long after the moon has risen behind faint cloud cover, the target is isolated at last. The Asset has watched him kiss his children goodnight, and give his wife a kiss and some exchange of words. There are many windows, to this ski lodge cabin, and he is visible in a little pool of light, seated with his head bowed over a book.  
The Asset knows what bedtime kisses mean, knows the mother has probably gone to tuck them in, that it will take a while. There may be bedtime stories. He knows how this works just as he knows where the Swiss Alps are, what a politician is and why he might have the power to do something others would not want. These are the things that the Asset remembers, but he does not remember How he knows these things.  
His position was chosen because the target and family came through this spot earlier in the day. It has not snowed since, and he walks in the icy footprints of his target all the way up to the cabin. The man’s stride is not so different from his own. Up close under the eaves, it’s easier to walk without leaving any marks, and he picks a sliding glass door open with ease, almost soundlessly. Inside he pauses, listening to be sure of the locations of people in the house. This is not a job for a gun, even with a silencer that’s too much fuss.  
In the living room, the man is absorbed in his reading, papers spread on the table before him, glasses sliding low on his nose. Moving on silent feet, The Asset draws a long knife. This will be quick and quiet, and he will be gone before the man’s wife finds him and starts to scream.

He steps into position, angled so he remains just outside the circle of lamplight, and the knife flicks out.  
The Asset looks into concerned blue eyes in a broad, chiseled face with a narrow pointy nose. He blinks.

“You okay there, Buck?” Steve is kind, gentle, and terribly earnest. There are days that he’ll punch him in the shoulder and call him a jerk, but there are times when he handles him with kid gloves, too. Bucky prefers the punching and joking around. It’s easier to be Bucky, when Steve is treating him like all the decades under Hydra never happened. It’s easier when he doesn’t have to think about that time, and can just be, but it’s easier still to not think at all. Hydra preferred it, when he didn’t think, just followed orders. Sometimes he still stares at nothing and doesn’t think at all, and sometimes it’s relief after a long day of thinking too much and trying too hard to be Bucky. It’s easier, so much easier, not to think at all.  
“You were a million miles away.” Steve jokes, and rubs his right shoulder. He smiles, but his eyes are worried, and his whole face says he desperately wants to think everything is okay.

“Yeah Steve. I’m okay.” Bucky blinks again, gives a little sigh, and smiles. “Punk. You never seen a guy thinking before?”

This time when Steve smiles, it’s like the sun, and Bucky feels warm all over.


End file.
